My view is that while there are anti-science views on the left wing, they’re swamped by what’s on the right, and that’s really the nature of things–liberals and scientists are allies (and conservatives and scientists are opposed) due to their psychology.

So I didn’t agree with the centrist, pox-on-both-houses framing of the show (and the opinion of Michael Shermer, who argues this). Still, it was a good, meaty discussion:

The bottom line: I had a retired admiral and a captain of the Navy explaining why climate and energy, respectively, are a seriously big deal to the military. And then I had the former administrator of NOAA reporting on work he’s done for the CIA recently, about how climate extremes could upend unstable regions of the world, like the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

So, I think concern about climate and energy is finding a very new audience–of very serious, pragmatic, get-it-done people. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

On Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston, Indre & I recorded the latest Point of Inquiry live with a stellar guest–Steven Pinker–whose work couldn’t be more timely, because it focuses on the root causes of violence and shows that actually, violence across our global society has been in decline. There is both audio and also video:

Nobel laureate economist and celebrated New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of our chief chroniclers of the extent to which the modern right has become detached from economic, scientific, and factual reality.

I’m belatedly reading Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain: if truth be told, I was afraid the book would be too much red meat for my own predispositions, and wanted to keep my cool. But Mooney actually makes a very good point: the personality traits we associate with modern conservatism, above all a lack of openness, make the modern GOP fundamentally hostile to the very idea of objective inquiry. If they want your opinion, they’ll tell you what it is; doubters of orthodoxy need not apply, and will in fact be persecuted.

And:

Chris Mooney wins again: we’re talking about personality types who aren’t responsive to evidence. Indeed, the more often you show them that their hard-money, anti-spending prejudices have been proven wrong, the more deeply those prejudices become entrenched.

I’m thrilled to have such a distinguished reader, and I’m really glad he seems to be getting a lot out of the book.

I have a big piece up at Mother Jones today. Basically, it’s my report on what Obama can do on climate, most of it without any Republican cooperation whatsoever.

In the course of writing it, I have to say I realized that all the chatter about a carbon tax right now is deeply misinformed, or at least incomplete.

The real climate action in the next four years is going to be at EPA. And the worst of all worlds might be if we get a carbon tax, but as part of the deal, EPA is preempted from taking the strong steps it has already launched.

That’s not a perspective you’re hearing at all right now in the commentariat. So, when Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney recently dissed carbon taxes….well, that might actually be a good thing.

Basically, Berlinerblau believes that the Christian Right has routed secularism in the U.S.–no argument there for many atheists and freethinkers.

But where he goes further is arguing that to fix the problem, atheists and religious skeptics need to be building allegiances with moderate religious believers, ranging from Sikhs to, yes, many Catholics.

So far as I know, few if any folks in secularism are actively trying to build these bridges–because of course, the predominant emotion out there is all about denouncing religion, rather than trying to work with it.

So it is a pretty controversial view–and one that should get some attention. Full show here; book link here.

There are only so many things you can do, prior to an election, to make a difference.

My cardinal contribution, I think, was captured right here: Along with Shawn Lawrence Otto of ScienceDebate.org, I moderated a presidential science policy debate between an Obama campaign surrogate, Kevin Knobloch, and a Republican, long time Rep. and former Delaware governor Mike Castle. (Castle did not represent the Romney campaign, which declined to participate).

The idea was to show–and we did so, successfully–that you can have a serious, substantive, and important debate about science policy and climate change…in essence, about vital issues totally ignored in the 2012 presidential debates.

Here’s my write up of the ensuing event (video also available at that link), which ends like this:

In the end, the debate seemed to bespeak a less partisan, and also more substantive Washington than the one we’ve grown used to in the last four years—a Washington that might actually get things done. The question, then, is why such events are such a rarity.

Candidates for president debate the economy without being economists, and foreign policy without being diplomats. With science issues like climate change affecting nearly every aspect of life in the 21st century, why shouldn’t they also debate those? This event modeled what such a presidential debate might look like, and showed that politicians—and non-scientists working in politics—can not only talk very intelligently about science policy, but that they can also get along doing it.

“I’ve really developed a liking for Kevin,” Castle said in his closing remarks.

Chris Mooney is a staff writer at the Washington Post covering energy and the environment, as well as a New York Times Best-Selling author. He has written four books, including The Republican War on Science. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Colbert Report, and numerous times on MSNBC.